Recently my TKD master asked me what my physical goals were. I don't want to have physical goals. I want to take each step forward as best I can. Physical goals for me just lead to disappointment. He even talked about him visualizing succeeding to succeed, but after being disappointed that I shouldn't get my black belt this year, I kind of feel like having goals rather than directions* for me continues to be a bad idea. Visualizing that did jack. I almost feel like winners can visualize because they are winners, not that they are winners because they visualize.

I have been wondering if he was thinking I would say something about a weight goal. But losing weight, while would be really wonderful for many many reasons, cannot be a goal for me. I know what it takes for me to lose weight and I know that if I do, i just rebound and gain it all back. I know that it makes me feel horrible and cranky. I know that I am burnt out on counting calories. I need to make changes in my life that I can in theory make permanent and being at a significant calorie deficit is not something I can sustain.

I've been wondering if it's worth me sitting down with him and chatting with him about it, possibly with some choice research in hand.

* By this I mean a goal is "run 1.5 miles in 18 minutes" where as a direction is "run more regularly so you get in better shape and improve your running stamina."

Completely unrelated, here's a quick handpan video. Just felt like making it.

I'm a big fan of tiered goals: minimum, base, and stretch. It helps me recognize when I'm using Type A ambition and tempering that with reality.

While I often talk about running goals in terms of time, I totally have used a different style for running as well:

Minimum: go running twice a week.Base: go 3x.Stretch: go 4x.

The key are things I can easily control. Me, I have trouble controlling my weight, so fine, don't try to control that. Me, I do find it relatively easy to get myself out the door for a run, so excellent, use that.

I also strongly like the use of objective measures: did I do X? should be measureable by a camera. "This is a photo of me out running", check! Did I go 2 miles or 12, did I go fast or slow, did I run 10% or 100% of the distance -- nope, not relevant. :)

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Getting back to martial arts, then maybe goals about whether you go to practice or not might serve you well. But if you're already easily going to all the practices, then hmm, that's a bit harder for me to think of good objective goals.

<goes to look up handpans> <vanishes into the endless Wikipedia maze, looks up somewhere around amplified cactus>

My last go-round at goal setting wound up enabling a bunch of logging, which has been interesting and informative, and has nudged some minor behavior changes, but hasn't pushed me into daily exercise. I'm still trying to find the right motivational buttons. It's a topic I'm interested in talking about, but whether I have anything useful to contribute remains dubious. (I can visualize all kinds of things. That doesn't get me off my butt at all.)

Talking to your teacher about your goals is likely useful, as he's more able to assist you in taking your next step if he has a sense of what you'd like that to be.

also, effective visualization is really hard. for aerobatics, it's pretty much necessary to train by visualization and pantomiming/"dancing" out maneuvers. I've tried and tried and it's still a struggle to practice effectively by visualization.